


Those Bright-Eyed Boys

by LavenderProse



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Aromantic Character, Aromantic Phichit Chulanont, Drinking, Friendship, M/M, Prompt #1: Confessions, Victuuri Week 2017, Yuuri and Phichit are best friends ok they would DIE for each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 22:32:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9628175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LavenderProse/pseuds/LavenderProse
Summary: Yuuri doesn't know how he got so lucky, to be surrounded by so many different kinds of love.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Victuuri Week day #1 using the Yuuri prompt: Confessions. I wanted to write something that expressed my feelings about Viktor and Yuuri's relationship whilst simultaneously examining the relationship that Yuuri has with Phichit because honestly I love their friendship; I love the idea that these two queer young men found each other in a foreign country and leaned on each other and now that they're both finally where they want to be in life that they're _so happy for one another_
> 
> And, of course, there's Viktor, loving Yuuri like it's his fucking job because he probably thinks it is.
> 
> God, stop me any time, I'm just so in love with these characters.

So, Yuuri’s alcohol tolerance is…pretty good. Like, there are _several_ Russians in this club right now and he’s keeping up with them pretty well. Is that a stereotype? He isn’t sure, but they aren’t so different—these people learned to drink on spirits, same as Yuuri did. He and Phichit ran bad, _bad_ vodka through a Brita filter and put it in water bottles and carried them in coat pockets to parties where they mixed it with punch, orange juice, coconut Margarita mix—anything cloyingly sweet that would mask the taste. Something that wouldn’t taste horrible if it came back out the same way it went in. It took a lot of trial and error to figure out where their limits laid, and sometimes Yuuri still fucks up. Getting wine drunk at the 2015 banquet is still at the tippy top of his list of _Worst things I’ve ever done, literally, ever_. He was hungover for _three days_ and spent most of the flight home wrapped around the airplane toilet to the point where a man who Yuuri is pretty sure was an air marshal asked him _where his parents were_.

Because Yuuri didn’t and still doesn’t look twenty-four. The same ageless quality is the reason Phichit started wearing eyeliner.

But yeah. Yuuri Katsuki? Pretty accomplished drinker. Not exactly something he’d tell his parents or the Japanese press, but not exactly something he’s ashamed  of either.

So when he shouts, “I’m not drunk!” in Viktor’s ear as they’re dancing, Viktor laughs and probably doesn’t believe him, but Yuuri is telling the truth.

“Look, okay—so, okay—my twenty-first birthday, Phichit and I got, like…oh boy, tequila? And there was a _worm in it._ I’m not even kidding, it was a real worm—”

“Mexican Town is a wild fucking place,” Phichit says, appearing suddenly at Yuuri’s back. This club is playing mostly American pop music for some reason, so with Phichit there it feels almost exactly like old times. The song is periodically telling everyone to _make their hands clap_.

“Phichit, tell Viktor I’m not drunk,” Yuuri says to his friend, leaning back against him and turning his head to yell against Phichit’s face. Phichit is familiar and soft and smells like the apartment Yuuri moved out of over a year ago. Viktor is kind and laughing and there is a look on his face like the first time he saw Yuuri do _Eros_.

“Yuuri still has his shirt on,” Phichit tells Viktor, now essentially wrapped about Yuuri like some sort of large and friendly snake. “So he’s not drunk. You don’t know what drunk looks like until you’ve seen Yuuri after eating a tequila worm.”

“We split it,” Yuuri insists, tugging on Viktor’s shirt until he’s pressing against his front, still laughing. Yuuri laughs with him because he’s _so happy_. He just won silver at the Grand Prix Final, he’s engaged to Viktor Nikiforov (Who’s beautiful and amazingly kind and very good to him and also: the love of Yuuri’s life) and his very best friend in the whole wide world was here to see all of it happen. “I only had half. I was drunk for two days.”

“I saw God,” Phichit adds, and then screams because the song has changed and it’s one of those songs that Yuuri will forever associate with half-remembered nights in the basement of a club on Michigan Avenue, riding home slumped across Phichit’s lap with slim fingers combing his hair back and giggling, the smell of forty degrees in Michigan in February. “Yuuri! This is our song! Viktor, this is mine and Yuuri’s _song_! This was the first American song I heard!”

“I’ll let you have him for it, then,” Viktor says. “I’m going to get some water.” He looks so _happy_. Yuuri can’t deal with it. He kisses him, his _fiancé_ , and then twirls around into Phichit, who laughs and wraps his arms around him and swings him around. Their hair is still slicked back from the free skate earlier. Phichit is sort of unbearably handsome with his hair combed back that way, his kind and expressive eyes with a fine outline of his usual black liner.

“I’m so happy for you,” Phichit gushes, tilting him backwards. “You’re engaged! You’re going to be married, Yuuri!” He says something in Thai that is probably congratulatory.

“I know,” Yuuri laughs. Phichit straightens him back up and they spin. Dancing with Phichit feels familiar, and good, and nice after all of the (Wonderful, frightening, sublime) excitement and strangeness of the last few weeks. If Viktor’s fresh perspective and new love is the compass Yuuri needs to find within himself a better and happier person, then Phichit’s comfort and reassurance is the path that Yuuri will follow towards it.

As the song ends, Yuuri kisses Phichit, smiling against his lips. It’s something he’s done hundreds of times. Phichit smiles back at him when he pulls away.

“I love you,” Yuuri tells him, wondering if a simple three words can convey the depth of feeling he has for his best friend.

“I love you too,” Phichit tells him, eyes kind and soft. “And I'm…so glad that you finally found someone who can love you the way you want to be loved. I want you to be so happy, Yuuri.”

The sting of happy tears builds up behind Yuuri’s eyes and in his throat. Thickly, he says, “I am happy. I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy.”

“Good,” Phichit says, wrapping his arms tight around Yuuri’s shoulders.

They pull away when the jostling of the crowd grows too violent, and by unspoken agreement Yuuri trips his way towards where Viktor disappeared to while Phichit spins back into the crowd, engulfed in moments. Yuuri finds Viktor on a barstool slightly removed from the dancefloor and somehow, probably because the floors of this place are their own special hazard, crashes between his spread knees. Viktor bursts out laughing and catches him by the fabric over his shoulder.

“Here, darling, drink this,” Viktor says, handing him a large and full glass of water. There is another glass, half-full, by his elbow.

Yuuri takes the glass and downs half of it in one go, not realizing how parched he was until the cool water hit the back of his throat. Viktor stops him from drinking too much of it at once, taking his wrist in hand and gently maneuvering the glass back onto the bar and Yuuri to lean against his chest.

“Really, I swear, I’m not drunk,” Yuuri mumbles against his shoulder. Viktor’s hand is big and warm on his back, reassuring. “The universe is just conspiring to make you think I am.” He turns his face into Viktor’s neck, inhales the smell of his cologne and feels happiness trickle up and down his spine. Tomorrow is the gala, when they will debut their partner skate and Yuuri will fulfill a lifelong fantasy in front of hundreds of people. Skating on the same ice as Viktor Nikiforov. Skating _with_ Viktor Nikiforov, dancing beside each other.

Viktor kisses the top of his head. “I believe you.”

Yuuri grumbles and turns around, leaning back between Viktor’s thighs with the edge of the seat digging into his back. Viktor wraps his arms around his waist, chin hooked over his shoulder, and Yuuri has never felt so warm and loved as he does in that moment. He feels wanton with it, like a slut—but only for affection, and only from Viktor Nikiforov.

“I haven’t seen you dance like that since the Gala,” Viktor murmurs in his ear.

“Hm,” Yuuri hums, tilting his head to the side. “Phichit’s the person I learned all of that from.” That and a pole dancing teacher named _Moxie_ whose class Phichit had dragged him to half a dozen times his last year in Detroit, but it’ll be a cold day in Hell (Or a warm day in Siberia) before Viktor learns _that_ particular tidbit.

Viktor presses a long, hot kiss to Yuuri’s cheek. “I think you must have had a love affair with our friend Mr. Chulanont.”

Yuuri stiffens immediately, spinning back around in the circle of Viktor’s arms. “I—Viktor, I would never—”

“Oh, Yuuri, no,” Viktor presses a hand to his face, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean it that way, love. I meant—I don’t know what I meant, sometimes I speak without thinking.” He presses a kiss to Yuuri’s forehead, gentler than the one previous.

Yuuri closes his eyes and bites his lip, drops his hands to Viktor’s lap. This is his fiancé, the man he’s going to marry. Doesn’t he deserve to have full disclosure? Even though the idea of telling him some of these things makes Yuuri’s anxiety spike, his blood pressure double, his palms sweat? How will Viktor feel, knowing that Yuuri is routinely alone with a man whose bed he frequented for longer than he and Viktor have known each other?

“I wouldn’t really call it a love affair,” Yuuri mumbles, playing with the buttons on Viktor’s shirt.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Viktor says. His hand goes to Yuuri’s chin, tilting it up. “It’s okay, darling.”

Goddamn it. What is it about this man and making him cry? Yuuri is beginning to think that he’s cursing himself to a life of weepiness, marrying Viktor. He’ll be buried under pillows daily, just fucking sobbing, and Viktor will have people over and be forced to say _Oh, that’s just my husband, he’s a bit emotional—don’t slip in the puddles._

“Phichit isn’t _like_ that,” Yuuri says quickly, just to get it out before he thinks better of it. “We—you should probably know that we…before I met you, before I moved back to Japan, we were—having sex. A lot. And we didn’t really, um, break up. I just—I moved back to Japan and that was, um, now things ended. But we were never—we didn’t date. Phichit doesn’t, um, _do_ romance, I guess? He’s the friendliest person I know, the best friend I have, and he's—I know he loves me, but not…not like that.” He reaches up and straightens out Viktor’s collar for the utter lack of anything else to do with his hands. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I’m sorry I didn’t before.”

Viktor’s hand trails up his back, fingers against the dip of his spine. When Yuuri chances an upward glance, Viktor’s eyes are soft, the line of his mouth gentle. He asks, “Did you love him?” in a way that says he might be, in an odd way, commiserating with Yuuri. Like he is speaking not as Yuuri’s fiancé, but as a person who understands what it is to have felt for someone something that they couldn’t return. Yuuri doesn’t know how he got in this situation. He has gone from admiring Viktor Nikiforov from afar, knowing all the while that he would probably never even hold a full conversation with the man, to standing between his knees in a crowded bar, Viktor’s promise on his finger and blue eyes boring into him, asking to be his confidant.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” Yuuri whispers.

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.” Viktor’s forehead touches his, their eyes now too close together to focus. An elephant could run through the room, and Yuuri would have been none the wiser. If he looked up in a moment and realized that the world had come to a calamitous end around them, he might not even be concerned. Viktor’s breath is on his lips, telling him, “I want to know everything about you. Even the parts you don’t like to think about. That way, I can think about them for you—and love them, even though you can’t.”

There go the tears. The first one drops down his cheek. The second sneaks into the crease of his nose and stays there, gross and wet and uncomfortable.

“I did,” Yuuri whispers. He licks a third tear off of his lips, tasting salt. “There was a while where I thought…maybe I could be happy. Just being around him, being affected by his presence, his…happiness. Because I didn’t think that I would ever get anything better than that—someone who made me feel happy, _and_ took me to bed, _and_ felt about me the same way I felt about them. Two out of three wasn’t bad, you know?”

“Did you tell him this?”

“No,” Yuuri snorts. “I knew how he was. One of the first things he told me was that he didn’t understand people getting married and only being with one person their entire lives. Phichit wants to meet people and make them his friends and have a big group of people that he loves and supports, not just one person. He wants to…roll around in bed with handsome men and not feel obligated to call the next morning. He loves people. He’s kind, and someday he’ll probably settle down in an apartment with a few friends and he’ll be happy like that. But I don’t see him ever devoting himself to one person. Not in the way I’ve always seen myself doing. Not the way I want to do with you.”

Viktor kisses him then, not to interrupt but to agree—to tell Yuuri that yes, that’s what he wants too, that he isn’t alone. Yuuri loves him, _God_ he loves him.

“Don’t think less of him,” Yuuri implores.

“How could I?” Viktor murmurs. Their hands lace together; Viktor brings his mouth to Yuuri’s ring. He’s only had that ring for three days and already, he thinks he might die if he lost it. “He loved you until I could.”

Yuuri wraps his arms around Viktor’s shoulders and presses his hot face into his neck, weeping. “I love you.” There’s a woman behind Viktor who probably can’t speak English and looks pretty alarmed at this red-faced crying man hanging off her seat neighbor, but she seems disinclined to comment. Yuuri closes his eyes and breathes.

“I love you too,” Viktor says, kissing his neck, cheek, ear, hair. “My Yuuri. My darling.”

He eventually pulls away and drinks the other half of that glass of water. The music is still pounding, and the tears gave him a headache and he’s _starving_ , but he thinks this might be one of the best nights of his life.

“Heeey!” Phichit crashes through the crowd, dragging along an unfamiliar man by the hand. The unfamiliar man is taller than even Viktor, Mediterranean with a slightly homely face but _piercing_ blue eyes that make him strangely beautiful, and a friendly, uninhibited expression. Phichit gestures to him, somehow using the same hand he’s holding onto him with. “I found you guys! This is Thomas.”

“Tomás,” corrects the man in a kind tone, obviously unconcerned. He probably wouldn’t be able to pronounce Phichit’s name either; Yuuri couldn’t his first hundred or so tries.

“Right! Sorry.” Phichit points to Yuuri. “This is Yuuri, my best friend.”

“Hi,” Yuuri says, falling back in shyness now that he has more water in his belly than vodka, still feeling the residual tear trails on his cheeks.

“And this is his fiancé, Viktor.” Viktor and Tomás shake hands, both exchanging accented greetings. “Yuuri’s the silver medalist, and Viktor’s his coach. They just got engaged the other day.” To Viktor and Yuuri, he says, “Tomás was telling me that his friend runs a _tapas_ bar not far from here, and that she’ll give us half off our food if we show her Yuuri’s medal.”

“You could show her your engagement ring instead,” Tomás says, gesturing to the ring on Yuuri’s finger. “A medal, an engagement, both are to be celebrated. Congratulations!”

“Thank you,” Yuuri says. To Viktor, he says, “I’m starved, what about you?”

“Always in the mood for _tapas_ ,” Vikor says, nudging Yuuri the barest minimum of distance away to stand up. He waves a hand towards Tomás. “Lead the way.”

They gather Mila and Otabek on the way out, and Viktor ends up at the front of the group, probably telling his life story to Tomás as they walk because that’s just what he does. In about ten minutes, Tomás’ friend the bar owner is going to recognize Viktor from one of his international ads and he’s going to spend twenty minutes signing autographs and taking pictures, but for right now he’s just being the friendly person he naturally is.

“Are you okay?” Phichit asks, walking beside him at the back of the group. He hand goes to Yuuri’s elbow. “You look like you’ve been crying?”

“I’m fine,” Yuuri says, and means it for once. He lets a smile break across his face. “I'm…the best I’ve ever been, I think.”

Phichit’s eyes dart over his face, examining, then breaks out in a smile of his own. “Same. I fucking _love_ Spain.”

“Well, it beats Downriver,” Yuuri says.

They laugh. Yuuri doesn’t know how he got so lucky, to be surrounded by so many different types of love.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you want more, I'm on Tumblr under the same username and I would love for you to drop by and scrEAM AT ME for awhile! I'll tell you all about my 2.5 thousand unfinished projects and gratuitously misspell Russian words at you.
> 
> Also: I'm not making fun of Downriver with that last line. Except I kind of am, because I'm from Downriver, so I know how bad Downriver can be. That being said, you can pry my headcanons about Yuuri and Phichit's midnight escapades through Lincoln Park looking for Taco Bell from my COLD DEAD FINGERS.


End file.
